THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Willamette, a quaint little north American town, has just opened the world's biggest shopping mall and it is Black Friday meaning one thing; sales, sales, sales! Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, a Zombie outbreak happened and now the expected hordes of shoppers are unexpected throngs of flesh-eating ghouls. For Frank West, freelance photojournalist and part-time journalism professor, this is no big deal - he's fought Zombies in Willamette before during the first outbreak from the original Dead Rising. With thousands more Zombies this time around and the whole town being filled with the mutilated walking corpses, Frank can let the sleigh ride begin on this Christmas-themed Zombie slaughter simulator.

MY VERDICT:

The first thing that hits you when playing Dead Rising 4, is just how different it is from the style of the first three games; the UI (user interface), the controls, staple game features like how health works and levelling up have all changed, even the visual appearance of Frank West has changed from memorable journalist to forgettable generic action hero. Where previous games in the series were all about rescuing survivors, defeating over-the-top psychopaths and time-management, this game is far more linear in narrative. Yes, that's right, we may have lost some old features - which, honestly, I kind of miss - but we have gained a proper, fleshed out and actually quite intriguing story. That story moves along at a cracking pace too - one of the highlights of the game. There are odd things to do around town if you like to ensure all game content is witnessed though they are all quite minor, never detracting from the overall flow of the game. The other main high note is the cinematics and voice-acting. Everything is wonderful and light-hearted, during the admittedly bleak Zombie outbreak chaos, kept comical by the ever sarcastic quotes and Frank's wonderful boyish charm. However, Dead Rising 4, good though it is, is definitely not the series highlight that was hoped for. For a start, and key for me, is the Zombies themselves. They seem to have taken a nosedive in terms of quality; being nothing more than cannon-fodder for your merciless, and often over-powered, combination weapons. The old staggering Zombies are gone and instead we get drab, semi-fast moving, ghouls prone to bursts of speed that seem lifted directly from State of Decay or, to a lesser extent, Call of Duty. The second big drawback is the ease of the game. No one, not even the "boss" characters gave me any serious difficulty or challenge; the Zombies, even the new special types only bite once and then immediately let go, allowing you time to recover lost health. The final point to raise is that the game crashed to desktop a few times, randomly, on my fairly high-end PC. Fortunately, the game automatically saves progress frequently so these glitches were only a nuisance, not a massive problem.